Level39’s Cognicity Hub to help develop smart cities

The Canary Wharf Group and Level39 have announced The Cognicity Hub, following the success of the Cognicity Challenge. The project aims to help grow smart cities of the future.

The Cognicity Challenge was a 12-week programme designed to find and develop smart city technology. The Cognicity Hub is based on Level39’s High Growth Space: 24, and is a 50-desk space designed to help innovators and corporates collaborate to develop smart cities.

Intel drives Smart Cities

Members of Intel are joining the hub as a partner, and the technology giant’s Internet of Things (IoT) and smart cities teams will also work with innovators to and allow entrepreneurs to use its technology.

The hub has contracted with leading smart city companies, and is looking to partner with organisations to offer increased value to hub tenants.

Members will have access to a smart city community offering collaborations; support from mentors; access to investors and partners; and opportunities to operate with leading smart city technologies.

Smart cities are gaining in traction at the moment, and appear to be on the minds on everyone from politicians and academics to the technology companies supplying these technologies. Last week, Barcelona announced it was working with Cisco on its own smart city project, while AT&T and numerous other vendors have been boasting about their efforts in this area.

However, there are numerous issues ahead with such deployments, with privacy and security, as well as standards front of mind for regulators. ITU-IT experts met in Singapore last week to discuss global standards for IoT and smart cities, while the UK government has been urged to create an ‘Office of Data Analytics’ to cope with the amounts of data coming from smart cities. In India meanwhile, red tape has threatened to block future progress in this area.